


Stubborn Beast

by CasualDanger



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Police, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 07:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23467624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasualDanger/pseuds/CasualDanger
Summary: Undercover police officer Jason Todd was already semi-estranged from his Police Commissioner father, Bruce Wayne. After a mission gone awry, Jason flees the city his father has claimed is his own feeling betrayed, vowing to return for revenge against the gang that almost killed him, and the father that made him wish he was dead.Basically, what if the Batfam were all cops, and Death in the Family happened anyway?
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Roy Harper/Jason Todd, Talia al Ghul & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 16
Kudos: 140





	1. Prologue - Best Far from the Flock

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Stubborn Beast" by Bear's Den

Jason learned later, months later – a full year, even – that it was the severe brain swelling that kept him in a coma for six days, but in his heart that never seemed right. Talia, when she visited him his first night awake, long after visiting hours were over, slipping past his armed “guard” in her own damn hospital, was the one who told him the truth that stuck with him, burying itself in that swollen, desiccated mind and ravaged heart.

“You were dead for twelve minutes,” she told him, and to her, with her doctorates and decades of medical experience, that was true, and Jason had never faulted her in their time as almost-mother and son the twisting and turning Talia had to accomplish to arrive at her version of the truth. When he had done the same with her – sleeping in jeans those first few months because they were harder to take off should some vile conquistador disguised as father invade his new room in the night – she let him.

“I was dead for six days,” he replied. In their old fashion, she allowed it. Her hand, so slowly and softly, grazed his wrist just above the cuff.

“But now you are alive,” she said, as fond as he had ever heard her.

“Not yet,” Jason said, voice trembling in pain and rage and two lives now left in a Gotham gutter. “Not yet.”

“There’s supposed to be a transfer order on the books,” Talia said, “falsified. I’m making a legitimate one. You can go anywhere, Jason. The shadow of your father does not need to hang over you – you’ve cast him out and he won’t return. Where do you want to go?”

He breathed a while gaining strength, reigning in a mind and body still throbbing with its last memories now a week past. Talia waited for him, the world forgotten, the ambulances returning and departing like summertime cicadas, an acclimated roar.

“Take me somewhere I can learn, Talia,” he said, eyes hard and clear. “I’ll be back here one day, to do what needs to be done, so take me somewhere I can learn it.” Jason rattled his handcuffed wrist, the noise thunderous above their whispered conversation. “You think this would have been his solution for any one of the others? That any of them would have been put up to do undercover work like this?” To his right, the heart monitor ticked on, agitated, but neither of them paid it any mind.

Talia wiped a tear from his eye that he hadn’t known to be there, her hand cool and nimble, avoiding the bandages wrapped around his skull, the stitches in his cheek.

“Amanda Waller at Cadmus owes me a favor. You’ll recuperate in their facility in Markovia; Bruce has no pull outside the states. Once you’re well, she’ll more than likely recruit you for Task Force X doing contract work for the military. It won’t be easy,” she warned, her voice still soft, “but you are one of the strongest men I’ve ever known. Maybe you’ll find the teachings you seek there.”

“Thank you, Talia,” he said. Jason wanted to call her mother, as Damian did, but he couldn’t bear the thought of having another one. Mothers are bombs, Jason thought. The shrapnel flies outward. He couldn’t prime her to destroy him as he had done the others.

* * *

Time didn’t march correctly while he recuperated under the watchful eyes of Director Waller’s doctors and surgeons. It limped, tottering one way or another through surgeries, blood work, physical therapy. Talia never came to see him, but Jason knew she had to have been receiving updates once they cut his morphine drip in half. She knew his stance on drugs after all, one of his earliest, hardest-earned lessons. Eventually, finally, the fog cleared, and Amanda sat down with him, just before discharge. She handed him his own medical file, the first time he had seen it in its entirety, _his_ entirety. She asked him to read it.

As he complied, Amanda remarked, “It’s astonishing how quickly you bounced back from a six-day coma. I’m impressed, Officer Todd.”

“You give up the badge when you die,” Jason snapped, eyes still scanning the records. “I was dead and brought back.” In truth, he had no frame of reference for what Director Waller was praising him for. With the massive concussion, the fallout of which was laid out in his file, he could not remember _when_ it was that this had all happened, not even the season or any holiday that could have grounded him in time. His past had grayed out into just that – a nebulous, vague past, with certain sharp memories protruding like broken glass swept up in a tornado. Occasionally, he could lose himself fully in a memory, self-flagellating with its vividness. Other times, he awoke with only a faint memory of the taste of molded bread or rusted tap water.

“In any case,” Amanda said, “I’m impressed. And I’ve spent a lot of money on you. I believe it’s time you earned your keep.”

“I’ll sign a contract as long as it’s got a time limit,” Jason said, still leafing through records, sparsely decorated with a childhood spent in free clinics, evolving into concerned notes from a nutritionist once Bruce had a hold of him, transforming into regular physicals and the rare gun-shot wound following in the “family” business.

“Five years,” Amanda hedged.

Jason scoffed. “Three,” he countered.

Amanda grinned and snatched the medical records out of his hands. “Welcome to Task Force X,” she said, and left, shutting the door behind her.

This is how it started, all those years ago: young police detective Bruce Wayne, just starting his journey to try and foolishly eliminate crime in Gotham in order to avenge the deaths of his parents, visits Haley’s Circus and rescues a traumatized Dick Grayson from the cooling clutches of his own dead parents. Then, once Bruce has played the game on easy, loving a child and being loved by a child that had already learned the ropes, he tries his luck with a real bastard of Gotham. It doesn’t go as well on hard mode as it did back in the first round.

When he was asked about his adoption story from other kids at school, this was always how Jason told it, certain that, in the grand plans of the universe, he had to come second for him to end up where he did. It all had to happen – there was no world out there where his life did not end up a series of other people’s decisions. There was no game he ever played where he was allowed to pick his own cards. Knowing that, viscerally, Jason was ready to learn how to cheat.


	2. Enough Pride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you to anyone reading! I am trying to post a chapter a week so as to not get overwhelmed. This work (and all my others..) has not been beta'd. Hope you enjoy!

**Two Years Later**

* * *

Sheila Haywood, for the few weeks that Jason knew her, was a blonde. The color was most likely from a bottle; her hair was even in tone, no highlights or lowlights up close, and it scratched against his arm the one time he held her.

In his dreams, she is always a coppery brunette, two deep shampoo cleanings away from being ginger. Catherine’s color. Hair is the only thing his mind takes from one mother and adds to the other. Sheila’s voice, her eyes, the set of her mouth are all _hers_ , but they’re put in softer focus, like Jason is already starting to forget these pieces of her. Maybe, as the nightmares continue and his memories fade, more of her will be replaced, until the only part of her authentically hers is the voice that sealed his execution.

_He’s a cop!_

Jason jolted awake in an apartment in Star City. Beside him, the bed was empty, but he could hear Roy talking in an unsettling high-pitched voice in the other room, probably on FaceTime with his daughter Lian. He exhaled slowly and rose out of bed, popping his shoulders and neck in the process. In the dim morning light filtering through the blinds, he found Roy’s sweatpants and put them on, shuffling into the bathroom to splash water on his face and properly wake up.

He inspected his five o’clock shadow in the mirror, rubbing his palm against the grain of it. There was a time, not too long ago and yet a lifetime ago, that Jason kept just the beginning of a beard to accomplish two equally important things: blend in with the criminal element he was shadowing, and piss off dear old _dad._ There was a time even earlier still that he begged for the same man’s attention in learning how to shave it.

“Admiring your own rugged good looks?” Roy asked from behind him. He met the older man’s eyes in the mirror.

“Well, your looks were indisposed,” Jason replied.

“Had to send my little girl off to preschool,” Roy said, wrapping his arms around Jason. “It’s still weird to me that you’re so tall.”

Jason groaned and pushed himself away from the sink, disentangling himself from Roy. “Can you stop reminding me you knew me before puberty?”

“Sure,” Roy said, following him into the bedroom. “Instead, should I remind you that I’m one of your brother’s very good friends and you’re making me keep your whereabouts a secret in exchange for the rare, random booty call?”

“I don’t have any fucking brothers,” Jason snapped. “And I told you I’m out if you keep bringing it up.”

“You know, you sounded so defensive that time, I almost believed it.” Roy tried to push him down gently on the bed, but Jason shrugged him off.

“Yet you haven’t told Dick. So what is it, huh? Either you realize what I’m saying is the truth, and I was never part of that family, or you don’t give a shit. Either way, what does it matter to you?”

Roy rolled his eyes, then sat down on the bed himself, hoping Jason would follow. “Well, first of all,” he sighed, “I know what a stubborn, dramatic bastard you are, and if I told Dick or anyone in Gotham that you were here, I know you’d probably never come back. And second, it wasn’t Dick or any of my friends back then that clocked my addiction, Jay.” Roy looked up to meet Jason’s eyes, now still and standing before Roy, but too agitated to sit. “I owe you one, and even though I know they all want to see you, _desperately_ , I care about you and I care about that gangly teenager who was determined to save my life.”

“You’re the only person in the world that just cares about me,” Jason said.

“Jason, that is not true. If you could hear how fucked up Dick was all last year when Napier got out, you’d –”

“What did you just say?” Jason interrupted, voice low and dangerous.

Roy stared at him, mouth agape. The room was as silent as death. “I thought you knew. He got out on a technicality or something.”

Jason nodded. “And the system moves on. A year or so is enough, I bet, for the prosecution. They’ll wait for him to do something else, something worse, before they try again.”

Jason’s voice was flat, as even and distanced as Roy had ever heard it. Roy stared up at him desperately to try and lock eyes, but it was of no use.

In an instant, Jason exploded into motion, grabbing his keys and wallet off the dresser, rifling under the bed for his clothes.

“Jason, where the hell are you going,” Roy asked, but it wasn’t a question. They both already knew.

“To kill him,” Jason said. “Now I know what I need to know, and I’m going to kill Jack.”

“You can’t go to Gotham, Jason, and not just because you’ve now admitted to premeditation! Waller wants you back tomorrow. Your contract with Cadmus has another year, remember?”

“Fuck Amanda and fuck Task Force X!” Jason bellowed. He heaved himself upward, towering over Roy still seated on the bed. “And fuck _anyone_ who gets in my way because they think their objective is more important than my death!”

Jason turned back to the dresser and grabbed his handgun, checking the magazine habitually, then holstering in the jeans he now wore.

“You’re not a kid anymore, Jay,” Roy said, defeated. “There will be real consequences for this shit. If what you’ve told me is true, Cadmus won’t let you go quietly.” Roy took a deep breath. “You’re upset and I understand that. You know I care about you, about us, but you’re scaring the shit out of me here. You’re alive, okay? Do you know that? You’re alive and people love you. Maybe it’s time to call –”

“Call whoever the fuck you want, Roy,” Jason said, “but, for the record? I knew you were shooting heroin because that’s how my mom went. You and I were never just _kids,_ and I know a thing or two about consequences. Now someone else is going to learn.”

Roy didn’t follow as Jason stomped his way to the front door, he just waited for the slam of its closure, which came quickly. Jason didn’t look back – his eyes were set on an even farther horizon. Once Roy knew the man was well and truly gone, he slumped back down at his kitchen table and made a very different phone call from the one that started his day.

“Hey, Dick. Listen, I’m sorry to bother you during work, but we’ve got to talk about something . . .”

Here is how this all started: Dick Grayson, back in Gotham from college only for the weekend, brings a friend home so that they can start their Spring Break road trip on the East Coast. The plan is to start in Gotham and take their time driving to Miami, camping the whole way there and trying every greasy diner they can find along the highway. To Bruce and Alfred, the idea seems nonsensical, but the two boys are positively delighted by the prospect, and Bruce seems to like Roy enough to trust him, so he lets them take his SUV.

“One condition,” he says, dangling the keys in front of them. “Just try to make nice with your brother this weekend.”

Dick works his grimace into a smile and snatches the keys. “Sure thing,” he says, and salutes at his father.

As they are walking upstairs, Roy asks Dick, “You have a brother?”

Dick shrugs. “He’s five years younger and we’re both adopted. So, kind of, but barely.”

Wayne Manor is an old, old house. Thin walls.


	3. Wander Your Island

Gotham was the same: grimy, choked with smog and overpopulation, tense with the knowledge that anything could happen if you didn’t keep your head down and keep moving. A piece of Jason that he hadn’t realized he was missing slotted into place. He had tried, in some way or another, to abandon the parents that had kept him, but now, standing back in Gotham’s suffocating embrace, he let her slip back into his life. Children of abuse often fall into old cycles of violence, and Gotham had been one of his most violent teachers, sparing him no warmth or comfort when he begged her for it. Instead, she gifted him the realization that pain could be currency, bartered with and meted out to those deserving and undeserving alike in order to survive. Just as this lesson became part of Jason’s genetic code, so too it seemed had the city. He had missed her, maybe more than anything else on Earth.

His first stop was a hotel bar – far enough from Park Row that there weren’t any runners or dealers that would know his face – part of a national chain of hotels so there weren’t any unsavory local characters at the top. There, he drank and he panned, singularly focused and taking advantage of one of the last times he’d have his full wits about him.

He had figured out the drill early enough with Cadmus – most of the vaccines and anti-inflammatories they had their “contractors” take before missions had to be bogus, something else. Floyd Lawton had called their main doctor Lazarus, but Jason knew that wasn’t how it worked. _He_ was Lazarus, excruciatingly rising from the dead at the whim of a god who cared not for a single person but for that person’s ability to lay down against the foundation of a greater whole. God saved Lazarus so he could die someplace else, and that’s what Cadmus was in the business of. Bruce, too. But – here he was getting distracted again.

The point was that, eventually, there were going to be consequences to whatever they had been giving him. He wasn’t addicted; there was no pull in his blood and bones for any particular feeling, not like what Catherine was afflicted with, but those in the Suicide Squad were only ever given six to nine days off at a time, and there had to be a reason for monitoring the schedule so intensely.

Jason was on day nine, having spent his full break with Roy in Star City, renting a life in domesticity he could never keep.

“You okay there, handsome?” he heard the bartender ask from a million miles away. He raised his head to look at her, realizing in the process that he had been hunched protectively around his drink, an old habit from days when food was scarce. He rolled his shoulders a bit and tried to smile at her.

“Fine, thanks,” he said. “But I could do with another when you’re free.”

She took a slow, exaggerated look around. “I’m positively drowning in customers here,” she drolled, “so I’m not really sure when I’ll be able to get around to it.”

Jason took in the empty bar and laughed lightly. “Sorry, just trying to be polite.”

The bartender laughed with him while she fixed another drink. “Then you must not be from around here.” She slid the glass over, then extended her hand. “I’m Holly.”

He took her hand lightly. “Jack,” he said.

“What brings you to Gotham, Jack?” Holly asked, busying herself with cleaning his empty glass.

“Family reunion,” he said. “Figured I’d get in a little relaxation before the pandemonium starts.”

“Oh? Got a big family?”

He grinned. “Rambunctious is more the word. We haven’t been all together in a while. A few of them might freak when they see me.”

Holly grinned back, looking Jason up and down. “Yeah, I can get behind that.”

He snorted and buried his face in his drink. Holly came around the bar and sat next to him. “Listen, honey, you can’t have a face like that and be bashful.”

He lifted his glass in cheers before taking a sip. “Are you not actually the bartender here?”

“No, I am,” she said. “But my shift is almost done and my roommate is coming to pick me up.”

“Not coming!” Jason heard from behind him. “I’m here and I’m in a rush to get back to work so chop chop, Holly.”

Jason froze. He knew that voice.

“I think the museum will survive without you for a few minutes, Selina. Besides, my replacement isn’t here yet. Come meet my new friend, Jack. Jack, this is Selina.”

Jason closed his eyes for a moment, then turned on his stool to face her, propping his elbows up on the bar behind him, forcibly relaxed.

“Selina,” he said.

Selina Kyle swayed back for a moment, as if she had seen a ghost. “Jason,” she breathed. “You’re in Gotham? What the hell are you doing here?”

Holly looked between the two of them, baffled. “I thought you said your name was Jack!”

Jason ignored her, eyes only for Selina. His plan had been to go to the precinct first, announce his return, but he hadn’t expected a run-in like this.

“Still working as a curator?” he asked genially.

Selina narrowed her gaze. “You didn’t answer my question. Have you seen anyone else?”

“Not yet. Planning on it, though. You trying to beat me to it?”

Selina could hear the edge to his voice, that old school Crime Alley challenge. She rolled her eyes. “I live in the Bowery with a roommate now. Don’t get up to Wayne Manor very much.”

“You didn’t back then, either,” he said.

“And compete with the shadow of Talia? No thanks. Damian made it pretty clear even as a toddler what he thought of me. And, to be honest, I’m not the mothering type.”

Jason chuckled and stood up, ready to beat a hasty exit. “While this has been fun,” he started, but Holly cut him off.

“Come to lunch with us!” she exclaimed. “Selina’s too important to be fired and I’m willing to forgive that you lied to me. Can never be too careful in Gotham, after all.”

“Relax, Holly. Jason doesn’t play for our team, if you catch my drift.” Selina smiled playfully while Holly pouted.

“Funny,” Jason said wistfully, “all that talk of not wanting kids, and I’m pretty sure you’re the only one that figured out I was gay.”

“Give Bruce _some_ credit,” she said. “I’m certain he knows, but he’d never say anything before you did. You know how your dad –”

“Bruce Wayne is not my father,” he said. Selina flinched as though his words had struck her, then she gathered herself and crossed her arms.

“So that’s how you’re playing this? You almost get yourself killed, fuck off to God knows where, only to come back and denounce the only person who gave you the time of day? He was _destroyed_ when you disappeared – and who do you think it was that had to put him back together?”

Jason took a swift step forward and loomed over her. “If he was really a fucking father, he would have gotten his head out of his ass and kept that bastard in jail. Instead, he spins an op that went south into some bullshit moral failing to get a pity fuck out of you, a woman who should know better.”

Selina swallowed audibly, her eyes wide, but her voice never betraying her fear. “Careful, Jason. Don’t careen so far from one father that you become another, okay?”

He turned the guilt that churned in his belly into more pain and rage, absolutely rich with it.

“You’re just like him, Selina,” Jason said, “thinking those are my only two options.” He brushed past her, and left the hotel.

Here is how they started: Bruce Wayne meets Selina Kyle nine months after his final split with Talia. Damian is only two years old and Bruce keeps her from the baby.

“I don’t want to confuse him, or stress him in any way,” Bruce says, and Selina is more than happy to agree.

Jason Todd is fifteen and not given the same treatment; in his father’s quest to engage him, Jason is shuttled on many a weekend trip with the couple. He can see it strains them – Talia enjoyed the idea of a legacy, whether blood children or otherwise, but Selina would rather just have her fun and her man. She is twenty-nine years old, and she didn’t sign up for a teenager.

Bruce feigns ignorance, tries to get them friendly by letting slip that Selina was once a thief as well.

“A shoplifter,” Selina corrects quickly. “Just little odds and ends as a kid. I was more thrill-seeking than anything else.”

Jason stares into the mirror hours later. He sees what Bruce sees. He sees a thief.


	4. Set Fire to the Bridges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Thank you again so much for sticking with this. I am still trying to update once a week, but work is crazy right now (I work in medical insurance and we're in a pandemic, so .... lotta calls) and there's been a lot going on. So please be patient with me! Thanks again.

When Bruce walked into his office, Timothy Drake on his heels and giving a coffee-fueled pitch for why the department needed a batch of the newly released fingerprinting kits, Detective Dick Grayson was already waiting for him, expression grim.

Bruce stopped in the doorway. Tim stuttered to a halt behind him, peering in around the man’s frame to catch sight of Dick.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Bruce,” Dick said.

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “In my own office?” he asked, but complied anyway, lowering himself into his office chair and swiveling to see Dick, leaning against the window sill.

“I can come back later,” Tim said, backing out of the doorway.

“It’s fine, Tim. Have a seat; whatever this is shouldn’t take long and we’ve got to come to an agreement on those kits.”

Tim stayed frozen until Dick nodded to come in. With both their approval, he took the other chair opposite Bruce.

“I just thought you should be given a heads up,” Dick said. “Jason is back in Gotham.”

“How do you know that?” Bruce asked.

“Roy gave me a call this morning. Apparently, they’ve kept in touch,” Dick said, spilling bitterness. “He didn’t give me many details, only that he was on his way here and he knows Napier is out.” Dick looked away, studying the dust on the sill. “Obviously, he’s not happy about that.”

“You should have told me the moment you heard from Roy.” Bruce’s voice was cold, a wall of ice that descended between them in the cramped, stale office.

Dick looked up sharply. “For what? Bruce, you can’t put an APB out on your son just because you haven’t seen him in a while. You’ve got a department to run, and chances are he doesn’t want to see you, anyway. Either of us,” Dick added, softer. He took a breath. “I let Alfred know that Jason is in town. If he’s here to see someone, chances are it’s for him. _You_ are just being given a courtesy notification, same as I was, and a reminder that it’s been proven you will do more harm than good if you start going all ‘Commissioner Wayne’ on him. Okay?”

“He’s my son,” Bruce bit back. “He’s been out of our lives for three years. I just want to know if he’s _safe_. I want to know where the hell he’s been all this time.”

Dick locked eyes with Tim. “Did you ever meet Jason?” he asked.

Tim halted his desperate impression of the wallpaper. “Uh,” he started eloquently. “Only briefly? I was just an intern back then, but,” he stopped, glanced from Dick to Bruce and back again. “I met him a few times in the precinct and I saw him once in the hospital, while he was in a coma.”

Dick scoffed. “Okay,” he drawled out, “ _ignoring_ the fact that you took an intern to see your possibly dying son,” he said, gesturing to Bruce, “Tim: from your interaction with Officer Todd, how do you think Commissioner Wayne’s tone is going to be received should the two meet?”

Tim again looked from one man to the other and back again. “Not well?”

Dick smiled his winning smile back at Bruce. “The child genius agrees with me.”

“I’m twenty-two,” Tim said.

“The very small baby genius agrees with me,” Dick amended, winking at him. “Anyway, keep what I’ve said in mind, please? I’m taking off for that training thing in Bludhaven tomorrow, so behave yourself until I get back.”

Bruce grunted at him in farewell, but before Dick could make his way to the door, it swung open.

“Hope you don’t mind me letting myself in like this,” Jason said. “I remember your door not being _open_ much.”

“Jason!” Dick exclaimed. Over his excitement, Bruce said,

“You can’t be back here without signing in.”

Jason positively beamed, but his eyes were manic, bright in the fluorescent lighting, almost shining with their green hue. “Why do you think I haven’t signed in? Just assuming that I’m out to break every one of your rules?”

There was a charge to the air, as if they were seconds away from a thunderstorm. Jason felt the tension fueling him, and he knew he had made the right choice in seeing Bruce first. No one motivated him more, he thought. There will be awful things to come – necessary things that he will have to do – and there was no part of him that would find it easy, but it would be infinitely harder without having the look of disdain on his father’s face as a fresh memory. Jason was, after all, a pendulum; the closer he gets now, the further he’ll swing. Even Selina saw that.

“I really think I should leave you to it,” Tim said, but when he went to sidle past Jason in the doorway, he was gripped tightly on the shoulder by the older man. Tim flinched involuntary; both Dick and Bruce stood, lightning fast in the coming storm, but didn’t step forward.

“From what I remember,” Jason said, looking down on Tim, smile wiped from his face, “you were practically his replacement middle child. I think you should be here for this.” A light shove sent him stumbling back into the room.

“Where have you been, Jay?” Dick asked.

Jason tipped his head. “I thought we went over that. I was at the front desk, signing in. Officer Brown up there, by the way, lovely girl. Had no _fucking_ clue who I was. Must be new.” Jason chuckled under his breath. He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead, his heart beating double-time in his throat. A body anticipating the fight to be physical, falling back on lessons stitched into him young. Here, though, there were only words.

“You know what I meant,” Dick said. “Jason –”

“You know where I’ve been,” Jason interrupted. The arrival of the storm. “So predictable. Not even a ‘good to see you’ after all this time.”

“It _is_ good to see you, son,” Bruce said. Behind him, Dick’s eyes were pained, imploring.

Jason turned from brother to father, resolve only getting stronger. The path had never been clearer to him, the cracked street he had walked all his life, unable to turn off, finally unfurled into the straightaway.

“No, it’s not,” Jason said, “because you know what it means.”

“And what does it mean,” Bruce asked, “other than my son returning home?”

“Your son is dead, Commissioner Wayne,” Jason said. “I want you to know that. Doing things your way killed him, and now there’s a man who wears his face.”

“I don’t believe you,” Bruce said, but he was still boarded up, empty. Jason only heard the distance between them echo with a thousand missteps, traps they had set for each other that they both always fell in.

“Well, that tracks,” Jason said lightly. “I’ve heard that one before.”

“For the love of God, stop antagonizing each other!” Dick shouted. “What was the point of this, Jason? If you’re not going to believe us when we say we miss you, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, have you said you missed me?” Jason asked. He let the question hang unanswered in the air between them, before continuing. “Napier is out of prison. For about a year, I’ve heard. Gotham has done nothing about it because it’s been stolen by _you_ ,” Jason said, pointing at Bruce, “and you are a do-nothing father, who would rather watch his charges die than sacrifice his moral superiority complex. I would know. I’m here, _Dick_ , because I’ve always known what’s needed to be done, and now I’ve learned how to do it. Here’s your warning to stay out of my way.”

Jason turned to leave. Bruce took a quick step forward, unable to fully train his face out of its bewilderment. “If you commit a crime,” Bruce called out, causing Jason to halt, “I _will_ bring you in. There are no exceptions for family when it comes to the law.”

Jason didn’t turn around, didn’t give Bruce the satisfaction of seeing his face once more.

“This isn’t a family,” he said, and let the door latch closed behind him.

This was the cloud before the storm: Officer Jason Todd has been on the job a mere three months, but he’s helping a detective as he is the only member on the force who speaks Portuguese. It is the language the victim speaks, a native of Bogatago who had come to Gotham on the arm of Bogatago’s richest son, Felipe Garzonas, and is due to leave with a black eye and a hospital bill for a panel of STD tests.

<<You don’t understand how powerful he is,>> she is telling him, alternating between the faces of the men before her with wide, unfocused eyes. <<He can have me killed back home, and no one would even care.>>

<<If we can get him here, then he can’t get you when you go home. You just have to tell us where he’s staying now. We will grab him today.>>

She buries her face in her hands, but her tears are dry now. There is nothing left behind her eyes.

<<Gloria,>> Jason starts, but she holds a hand out.

<<He is at the Iceberg Hotel and Casino,>> she says.

Once they are back at the precinct, Jason is practically vibrating in anticipation. He wants to be on the detail to nab Garzonas, and he says as much to the detective.

“Not so fast, rookie,” is the reply. “We need to wait for the rape kit on this one. Felipe’s dad is high up in their government. The ducks have to all be in a row, or we risk an international incident.”

Jason puts up a fight, but it doesn’t matter. They don’t go that day, or the next. Instead, 28 hours after he is translating for Gloria, he is watching the coroner wheel her corpse out of a Motel 6; suicide by hanging. In her phone, they find the last call was inbound – the number is traced to a hotel room in the Iceberg.

The rape kit comes back a day later. Jason accompanies two other uniforms and the detective, a man so distorted in his memory that Jason cannot even recall his name or face, to the Iceberg Hotel. When they get to Felipe’s room, his bodyguard puts up a fight, and both he and Garzonas are killed.

Felipe is found with a gun, but it is holstered.

“He was pulling when I shot him,” Jason tells Internal Affairs and Commissioner Wayne.

“Was he?” Bruce asks back.

IA clears Officer Todd of any wrong-doing. Jason is sure his father still has some doubts.


	5. Expose Your Flesh to Your Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all I'm back. So sorry for the wait. I also want to maybe clear up some stuff. 1. Alfred has dropped the "Master" stuff because it really doesn't make sense in the year of our Lord 2020, nor could I make it work with the tone of this fic. And 2. If this is the first fic of mine you're reading, I'm so sorry to tell you this late (5 chapters in lol) but I do little to no action. I suck at it. It doesn't interest me. If I wanted a bunch of punching, I'd open the comics. I write mostly dialogue and introspection -- you know, the boring stuff. So I apologize if you're looking for the excitement! I'm afraid you won't find it here.  
> To those who have stuck with this, I appreciate you so much! Like I said before, I'm going to try and update regularly, but life is crazy and gets in the way. Thank you thank you thank you to anyone who has subscribed, bookmarked, left kudos, or commented. Forever in your debt!

Jason made sure to thank Officer Brown on the way out, pausing at her desk to sign himself out and take a look about the room. It was a gamble, he thought, and a lot could have changed in his absence, but –

There. There he was, sitting at a cramped desk in the corner of the bullpen.

“One more thing I have to do,” he said sheepishly to Officer Brown, nodding in the direction of the desk. "If you don’t mind that I’ve already signed out?”

“Be my guest,” Stephanie replied. “You don’t know how much joy it brings me to see these guys out here side-eyeing you and shitting their pants. What are ya, IA?”

He noted her Crime Alley accent and laughed, more genuinely than he thought he could handle after being back in the lion’s den. “Nothing like that,” he told her. “Only went a couple weeks as a plains-clothes officer before transitioning to undercover. They’re worried I’m going to call their wives, not the Commissioner.”

She smiled back, then waved him on. “I wouldn’t mind you doing both. Go on ahead.”

“Thanks,” he called back to her, already on his way over.

The officers parted for him – he had spent months on assignment with one of the most notorious gangs in Gotham after all, at a time when major gangs were trying to band together, divvy up turf and information in exchange for less bloodshed in the streets. Jason knew where most of Gotham’s bodies were buried, and that included what cops were on whose payrolls. He hadn’t spilled yet, but he also hadn’t stepped a foot in GCPD’s headquarters since the day before he died on assignment. Going straight into Bruce’s office had to make some of them sweat.

“Mugsy,” Jason called out as if he were seeing an old friend.

Mugsy’s eyes were dark, flat. Around them, the bullpen held its breath. “It’s Officer Muggs,” Mugsy said.

“Maybe in here, but that’s not what I heard,” Jason said. Mugsy’s chair creaked under him as he shifted, glancing towards Bruce’s office door. No one had exited yet, but Jason needed to be quick about this if plans were to be set in motion right.

“I need to talk to your boss, Mugsy. The _other_ one. I’ll be waiting down at his textile factory at 5:00 sharp. Let him know, or I let Wayne know you moonlight as the Ventriloquist’s little puppet.”

Mugsy growled but gave no dissent.

Jason was out of time. Looking over Mugsy’s head, he saw Tim head out of the office. “Good boy,” he said to Muggs, then began his tactical retreat.

“Wait! Wait!” he heard behind him. Almost to the door, Jason felt a hand at his elbow. He whirled back and snatched Tim’s wrist, his grip bruising.

The kid looked up at him, wide-eyed but without fear. Jason gripped tighter.

“I just wanted to say,” Tim whispered, “that I didn’t agree that day. I never agreed with the decisions that were made when you were in the hospital, and I made that clear, to the force and to Commissioner Wayne.”

Jason let go of Tim’s wrist as if he had been burned by it. He could practically feel the heat radiate up his arm and scorch his face, searing his vision red.

“I’ll make sure they put that on your headstone if Bruce ever sends you out there to die,” he practically spat in Tim’s face. Stephanie was knocking at the plastic around her front desk, concerned at what was before her. When Tim turned around, Jason was gone, barreling out into the street.

* * *

Before his 5:00 date at the warehouse district, Jason did two things: popped into the nearest convenience store to buy a pay-per-minute phone, and take a cab to the bank to withdraw entirely too much money. The phone was needed because he had ditched his somewhere off the interstate outside of Star City, aware that the second he hadn’t shown up at the designated rendezvous point, Waller would be tracking him. He could practically feel the target she’d have painted on his back, but it wasn’t any larger or more oppressive than the one Bruce had put there, a target that had started so small, so innocuous when he was just a boy – a target that he thought had been a gift, a target that, at certain moments of his life, he had taken the brush from Bruce and helped to paint himself.

The money was for his next stop, a place where cash could still reign king if you didn’t want any questions asked.

He gave the teller his ID card and debit card. “I need to know how much is in the account first, please.”

“Of course,” the teller said, inserting the debit card into his computer. They waited in companionable silence for a moment, before the teller’s brows shot up. “You came to the right counter, Mr. Todd,” he said. “Only a manager can handle the platinum accounts.”

Jason cocked his head, immediately paranoid. “Platinum,” he asked, keeping his voice friendly. There were a few more keys clacked before the teller responded.

“Oh, yes, it looks like the account was upgraded by your joint holder, Ms. al Ghul. A Platinum account gets certain special treatment by the bank. A perk of having an average daily balance over two million dollars.”

Jason blinked at his own reflection in the plexiglass. By his own vague recollections, there had been barely a fraction of that amount of money in the account when he had left Gotham, and he hadn’t really touched the account since. Most of his expenses were paid for by Cadmus, carting him from one country to another, and the small stipend he received for his leave was more than enough.

How long had Talia been a joint account holder? He had opened the account himself at 18, desperate to get away from Bruce’s old family money, stashing dollars and cents he had saved from shitty mall jobs or helping Bruce’s rich ass neighbors with their cars when they were too lazy to get services in the city. Had he needed a co-sign for the account then? It made sense that he would call Talia, not Bruce, but his mind was blank where there should have been explanation.

“Mr. Todd?” the teller said. “Your balance is currently 2.16 million dollars. Was there anything else you needed?”

Jason’s eyes focused back on the man behind the glass. “One of the platinum perks, I assume, is withdrawing large sums of cash?”

The teller smiled. “Yes, sir. Will you need a secure pouch?”

Jason smiled back. “Probably a couple.”

With a duffle bag of cash under his arm and no other luggage to his name, Jason checked in to the Iceberg Hotel – one of the only hotels Jason knew of that wouldn’t ask for an ID or credit card if you paid enough in cash up front. It was a necessity that he stay here: the access to information, the circles he needed to infiltrate right in the building were unparalleled, but the sight of the lobby, the casino floor, the lounge restaurant left him on edge. Even knowing now that justice and crime were illusions, unquantifiable, the men that snaked these halls were capable of contextual evil. His soul desperately sought to divorce itself from them, but his mind knew he had to be here and relished in it. Let them find me with the scum, he thought, where they always believed they would find me. Let their prophecy be self-fulfilling, let me be what they deserve. His mind absolutely ran with it: let me, let me, let me, but – there was no free will to it, not really. The trajectory had been set long ago, in the mouth of an alley made infamous in his family by two things: when Jason met Bruce, and earlier, when Bruce met Gotham; truly, cruelly.

Soon enough he was in his room, sitting on the edge of the bed, lost in his mind once more and running his thumb over the edge of the cell phone. He had about two hours to kill, two hours that needed to be spent perfecting an exit strategy, covering his tracks before he even created them, but instead his thoughts were on a phone number.

Instead, he called a home.

“Wayne residence, may I ask who’s calling?” a smooth voice answered.

Unwitting tears sprang to Jason’s eyes, loosened by the emptiness of the room. Somewhere, he could hear Willis call him a girl, could feel the slap on his face. Somewhere closer, he could see the awkward discomfort on Bruce’s face when he sensed even a whiff of emotion.

“Hello? May I ask who’s calling?”

“Hi, Alfred,” Jason said. There was silence on the other end of the line, two men just breathing at each other. “It’s Jason,” he added, haltingly.

“Oh, my boy,” Alfred choked. “I know exactly who it is. Richard told me that you had come home.”

“No,” he bit out, voice tight to keep from keening at the older man. “No, Alfred, I haven’t come home. I can’t.”

Jason was slipping, he could feel it clearly, the absence in his heart growing with yearning, not rage. It had been a mistake to call Alfred, one that might cost him dearly in the coming days when he would have nothing but pain and resolve to fuel him. This was not a pain that could be used as currency to pay for the deeds to come.

“Why can’t you, Jason? It’s been hard for this old man to be without you for so long, never knowing if you have been well or cared for.” Alfred’s voice barely wavered now, having collected himself and his stiff upper lip.

“You were without me almost all my life,” Jason answered, suddenly disappointed at the level tone, the banal curiosity where he thought there could have been a yearning to match his own.

“The first decade was unavoidable, my boy. These past few years were not.”

“Oh, Alfred,” he said, voice teasing even as his eyes still stung, “it was you who taught me we are all just players playing our parts.”

Alfred chuckled in response, oblivious maybe to the conflicting emotions tangled in the phone lines; indifferent, too, was an option that swirled subconsciously in Jason’s mind.

This is Bruce’s father, Jason thought. This is Bruce’s most loyal man. None of that makes him your grandfather. You knew that even then.

“Now you’re just rubbing it in that you’re depriving me of the only other worshipper of the Bard in Gotham.”

“I’ve got lots of things to do, Alf; the night is still young. People to mingle with, bars to drink dry, you know the deal.”

“Now don’t lie to me, boy,” Alfred said sternly. “Drinking was never a vice you had.”

“But I did have many, didn’t I, Alfred?” Jason asked, trying to replicate the man’s casual tone from earlier and missing the mark by a mile. “You were always worried about that, I remember.”

“Don’t we all have vices, Jason?” Alfred returned mildly. “Little sins we partake in to keep the larger ones at bay?”

“I don’t recall anyone else being preemptively punished for their little sins.”

“I don’t recall that ever happening to you, either,” Alfred said.

“You didn’t do the punishing,” Jason said. “That’s why I’m trying not to hurt you.”

“If you hurt your father,” Alfred said, “you are hurting me.”

“How come your ability to see right through me never transferred to _him_?” Jason asked. He hung up before he could receive a response.

* * *

Coming back to himself had been difficult, and Jason found that he wasn’t truly back inside his own head in the present until the Ventriloquist was standing before him, flanked by two of his most intimidating men – that is to say, a couple of coked out, scrawny little fuckers half Jason’s size.

Arnold Wesker, from what Jason’s early days spent orbiting around the seedier spots of Gotham informed him, used to be somebody. His Ventriloquist persona has been the first of its kind, before half of Gotham’s gangs had an asshole with flair and a nickname to match. Now? All Wesker was good for was the history lesson; he might not have the influence of Black Mask, but he was there when Black Mask first got started, still wet behind the ears and stupid enough to think he could unify the Gotham underground in his image. The Ventriloquist had been part of those talks, the last old gangster new Gotham gave any respect to – mainly because he was harmless now, reduced to one cop on the force and a dozen expendable tweakers. Still, he _was_ at that meeting.

Jason had been there, too. Jason had died there.

Wesker looked Jason up and down, probably trying to place him. At 68, he was the oldest in the game now, and chances were he didn’t really remember Jason, it was only Mugsy’s tip-off that made him take the meeting.

“I was told this would be an important parley to have, not a first date where we just stare lovingly into each other’s eyes,” Wesker groused.

“Oh, Arnold, I was just reminiscing about the first time I laid eyes on you. There were a lot of things Roman and Napier had me learn about you.” Jason smiled coyly, hands on his hips.

“Oh, yeah?” Wesker asked, already softening, calculating the opportunity before him. Desperate for any score, hungry for it. Jason remembered being hungry like that. Thirteen years old and absolutely starving, literally. It made him _stupid_ , stealing the tires right off the cruiser of one Detective Wayne. “What did you learn?”

“That three years ago, you were a weak mobster with no territory, and in the fallout of that bullshit unity meeting that went left, it could have only gotten worse since then.”

Wesker gasped, practically scandalized, and Jason laughed at his widened eyes.

“You need me, you little shit, for whatever the hell brought you back here.”

“No, I need a reason for all the termites to be pulled out of the woodwork.” With that, Jason flung his arm outward, embedding the knife he had hidden up his sleeve in Wesker’s chest.

The hilt of the blade is perfectly straight, a line stretching back through the Gotham streets, back to where it all began, not too far from here: Sheila Haywood, years into her sentence as one of Black Mask’s girls, her usefulness morphing from her body to her revoked medical license, stands outside the back door to one of her boss’ most important meetings. She is trembling head to toe, can’t even light her own cigarette. Willis Todd’s son holds her hand steady; he lights the Marlboro in her mouth with his own lighter, then lights his own. Only days ago, she learned he is her son, too. Only a few minutes ago, he told her he was a cop.

“I’ve already reported back to GCPD that this is going down today,” he whispers close to her ear. She can feel the ghost of the smoke curl through her hair at the nape of her neck. “They’re all going to go down, one fell swoop, but if you stick with me, I will get you out of here, Sheila. You don’t deserve to get locked up with these assholes. Trust me, I know what it’s like to do what you have to do in order to survive.”

He waits for her to say something. She takes a drag off her cigarette.

“You kept quiet about me being your son,” Jason says. “That could have blown my cover wide open, _you_ could have sounded the alarm the second you knew I was going by a fake name, but you didn’t.”

Sheila nods, almost drops the cigarette from her mouth. “We need to go inside before they get suspicious,” she says, then she leans in and hugs him, surprising herself with her own tenderness, it seems to Jason; when Sheila pulls away, her eyes are wide and her skin even more sallow than before.

“After you,” Jason says, and holds the door open for her.

The room hadn’t yet been filled out. Jason takes his spot by the door with the rest of the lower level guards. Sheila takes her spot by Jack Napier, Black Mask’s right hand.

“Is Roman here yet?” she asks him.

He laughs at her a little too loudly. “No, you know how he enjoys being fashionably late.”

She waits for all the eyes to wander back off from them before responding. “Good – we’ve got a problem.”


	6. Those Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm back? Can you guys believe I actually have a degree in creative writing? Not that it shows, in my lack of discipline OR my writing. Apologies for the lateness!

The twin tweakers had their guns up a moment later, but there was hesitation from their shock. They all stood, none of them breathing, as Wesker gurgled and died.

“Now, now,” Jason said, his hands raised slowly, “let’s not do anything rash. After all. I’ve got a present for you two.”

They looked at each other, then back to Jason, guns still raised, but not blasting just yet. “What is it?” the one on the left asked.

“A tremendous amount of money,” Jason smiled. “And an opportunity for advancement.”

“Advancement?” the other parroted, and Jason knew they were hooked.

“As far as the rest of your Boy Scout troop is concerned, you’ve gotten a promotion. They’ll take direction from you, and you’ll keep them in line. Think of me as your booster parent. I supply the cash, and make strongly worded suggestions about what you do. Starting with this one: if you’re still in the drug trade, you’re done dealing to kids and you’re keeping away from the schools. Got it?”

Again, Thing One and Thing Two captured each other’s attention, a silent conversation between them.

“How much money?” they both asked.

Through the numbness that had started to seep into his body, Jason could feel the skin of his face split into a smile.

* * *

He talked shop with his new employees and then found himself back in his old stomping grounds, about a block and a half and three floors below where Catherine Todd aspirated on her own vomit and died, from where Willis marked their lives and their bodies up with damage Jason never thought would heal. He had been orbiting this part of town all day, an asteroid getting sucked further and further into the gravitational pull until, finally, the debris that was once flung outward had come crashing back, disrupting and cratering anything he touched.

So, Jack Napier had gone to ground. That’s what Jason’s new best friends had told him, once they stopped counting money. The trial had flopped because of a shitty prosecutor, but losing Sheila had made Roman nervous; paranoid. He didn’t trust Jack anymore, so Jack was in hiding, probably sitting on old stacks of cash from when Black Mask was still in diapers.

It’s not exactly what he thought he would find coming back to this place, but in fairness he hadn’t had much of an imagination about it. For all his feelings on the apathy of his father, on the apathy of all Gotham and her wretches, he had still returned half believing they would all have been frozen in time, just waiting for him as if all he had been doing was studying abroad for a bit. Now that he was back, there was a child’s expectation that nothing drastic could have happened when he wasn’t there to see it. It was difficult to have so many disparate feelings take hold in him – Jason was heavy and sore with it, but he couldn’t choose between thinking Bruce hasn’t changed, never would, and thinking that the whole world, Bruce included, had moved on without him and become unrecognizable.

Someone bumped his shoulder, stumbling as they turned to walk up the apartment’s stoop. Jason blinked back to himself, massaging the crick in his neck. He had been staring up into the window of what could have been his mother’s old room, though from the outside of the building it was only a guess.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and kept moving. Another set of warring thoughts crawled out of the dull, thirsting ache in his skull – Catherine was not really his mother, but neither was Sheila Haywood; neither was Talia for that matter, though all of them had affected him, were affecting him still. Gotham was a mother, too – the one most seduced by his father, most willing to betray him for that reason, as if any of them had needed one.

But Jason was no longer a child, and knowing the toxic influences he had swirling around him wouldn’t result in any sort of condemnation for the parents that had placed them there. Keeping score, even as meticulously and obsessively and _maliciously_ as Jason had, didn’t mean anyone cared about the points.

The sun had been down for quite a while by the time Jason made it back to the hotel, but it looked as though Gotham was just waking up, and after flinging his now empty duffle bag on the bed and washing his hands of any blood, he joined the casino patrons downstairs. He was too wired to sleep, and too afraid to sit alone with his thoughts, lest he try Alfred again or – God forbid – Bruce. He sat at one of the smaller two-person tables at the mouth of the casino’s restaurant, flagging down a waitress for a drink and observing the floor. Task Force X had given him more patience than he had had as a beat cop and then working undercover. People watching had become meditative in a way – not something that he particularly enjoyed, but a tool to be used to lower his blood pressure.

It helped now that he had no fear, truly. As a child, he thought he was fearless because he had felt invincible, but now he knew better. There was a difference between feeling like no one could touch him, and knowing that he could put down any motherfucker that tried. Learning wet work from some of the best in the business tends to change a man that way.

Halfway into his second drink, Jason watched Detective Grayson wander into the Iceberg, doing his own scan of the area, eyes stopping on Jason hunched forward in his chair.

He wasn’t dressed like Detective Grayson, Jason noted as Dick made his way across the floor. He was dressed casually, in a gaudily bright blue polo shirt and faded denim jeans, just as outrageously ill-fashioned as Jason remembered, just as effortlessly catching the eye and attraction of every man and woman in the square block. A bird of paradise.

Dick made is to the table and sat down opposite his brother. Jason stared at him a long time, weighing the pros and cons of starting a brawl.

“How’d you find me?” he finally asked, swirling his drink.

“We’re family,” Dick said.

Jason looked at him again. They met eyes, and Dick smiled sheepishly. “I called Alfred and he thought you might be ‘out on the town.’ I checked almost every dive from Bristol to here.”

Jason scoffed. “Great detective work, Grayson.”

The waitress working their section swung back around now that Jason had a visitor.

“What are you drinking?” Dick asked.

Jason raised an eyebrow and wagged his glass. “Whiskey, dumbass. What’s it look like?”

“That’s disgusting. I’ll have a cosmo,” he told the girl.

“Still desperate for attention, huh?”

“Just very secure, thank you.”

As the waitress began to walk away, Jason called after her, “To my tab, please.”

Dick hummed. “You been making better money since you’ve been away?”

“I don’t want you using a bar tab as an excuse to stick around. In fact, feel free to take that drink and go play blackjack.”

Dick shrugged. “I’m too bad at math to count cards.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Sure.”

Silence again, until Dick’s drink was deposited in from of him. “I’ve missed you, Jay,” he said quietly.

“You never had me to miss me,” Jason said, his voice still calm, genial. “I don’t even know what you’re doing here.”

“That’s not true,” Dick sighed, agitated. “I was an asshole in the beginning, okay? I remember. And I remember you matching me shot for shot in douchebaggery back then, too. But we got _better_. Whose apartment did you hide out at when you and Bruce got into it?”

“Are you kidding me?” Jason’s voice took on a shrill edge. “That was _one time_ , and you complained about me cramping your style the whole day! We barely even spoke. You were too busy trying to get in your girlfriend’s pants.”

Dick laughed lightly. “Yeah, and Kory was far more into watching that cooking show with you. Look – I don’t know why you remember it so poorly. I thought we had fun by the end of it.”

“And I thought the whole experience was bullshit. The truth probably lies somewhere between us, but you’re too much of a stubborn prick to concede, and so am I. So here we are, playing chicken with our adolescence.”

Dick rolled his eyes and leaned back. Jason realized that the man had to be thirty now; it had been a long time since he had thought of Dick as _old_ , but now he could see the beginnings of that idea coming back. He looked a little like Bruce, the bastard.

“You want to know what Gordon said to me?” Dick asked.

Jason almost snorted his whiskey out his nose. “Probably something along the lines of ‘Stop screwing my daughter.’”

“Ha, ha,” Dick said, taking a sip of his own drink. He leaned forward again, bracing. “Jim Gordon told me once that you were the most present, self-aware, emotionally cognizant cadet he had ever taught.”

Jason’s vision tunneled to Dick’s face. He could see the man was serious, but it only made Jason’s pulse climb. “Get to a point,” he warned.

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing back in town, Jay? You practically came right out and said it in Bruce’s office. And I have it on good authority that you’re smart enough to know what you’re doing, too, and what’s really going to happen here. You are going to ruin your life if you keep going down this road.”

Jason surged forward, feral. “What life?” he gritted out. “I’m not buying what Bruce is selling, and I’m not buying this fake fucking sympathy, either. I don’t care if this is a one-way street, or whatever stupid cop cliche you want me to believe. I’ve been expendable since I was fucking born, Dick, not that you’d know what that was like.”

“It wasn’t like that in Bruce’s house, Jason!” Dick argued back.

“How would you know! You weren’t there when I was. You never even cared to know me.”

Dick stood. “Well, I certainly don’t know you now.”

Jason mirrored him. “Finally, there he is! That self-righteous, holier-than-thou first and favorite son.” He clenched his fists to keep from shaking.

But Dick wasn’t listening. His attention was over Jason’s shoulder, looking at a line of televisions.

Jason turned to see what had grabbed him. It was a breaking news report – Arnold Wesker, also known as the Ventriloquist, was found decapitated, sitting at the end of a dilapidated Gotham pier with his own head in his lap. In his mouth had been found a note: “Napier was here.”

Jason turned back to Dick, a small smile on his face. “Guess it’ll be a late night for you.”

“Oh, Jason,” Dick said. If Jason didn’t know any better, he’d think he had seen tears in Dick’s eyes. “I’m off to Bludhaven in the morning. It won’t be me that figures it all out.”

Jason cocked his head and opened his mouth, but Dick held his hand up to halt him.

“Stop,” he said. “I can’t know, okay? I cannot fucking know.” Dick moved forward a step, his arms raised out from his body just a bit, almost like he was contemplating an embrace.

Jason stood before him, unmoored, the anger whooshing out of him for the moment as confusion took over. He had killed Wesker, had his new associates set the scene, had forced the note, but suddenly he was thirteen again, vying for the approval of a brother he would never get to have.

Dick thought better of whatever he was about to do. He turned and left.

* * *

Before Jim Gordon was director of Gotham’s police academy, he was Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department. That is when it started: Jason Todd is in the lobby of GCPD headquarters, not cuffed but trapped all the same under the watchful eye of the commissioner himself, whose attention he had caught when the man had gone for yet another cup of coffee. Jason has been Bruce’s son for three months; he has been a student at the private academy for three days.

“Looking for your dad?” Gordon asks, looming over him. It is the first time someone has acknowledged the adoption papers for what they really mean, that Bruce is now Jason’s _father._ This includes Bruce.

Jason juts his chin out but he doesn’t speak. He didn’t have many run-ins with the cops during his time on the streets, but there are so many things he has heard or learned, and it takes a long time to bury knowledge once needed for survival.

Gordon smiles at him and crosses his arms. The long sigh that comes out of his mouth blows his ridiculous mustache around. Jason raises an eyebrow, a challenging look that he is trying to learn for Talia, who has given him his first high society lesson – confidence is as good as any physical shield if you wield it well enough.

“Are you supposed to be here?” Gordon amends. Jason grins wide at that, but stays quiet.

Over Gordon’s shoulder, Bruce has arrived.

“Wasn’t Dick supposed to drive you home after school?”

Jason shrugs, reduces his grin to something a little guiltier. “I blew him off and took the bus here.”

Bruce looks on, unimpressed. “Your allowance is not for riding the bus to avoid Dick.”

For some reason, Jason’s face colors at Bruce admitting to giving him an allowance. Gordon is still in their circle, lingering.

“I wasn’t bothering anybody,” Jason grouses. “I was just going to stick around ‘til you were ready, hitch a ride with you.”

Bruce sighs. “Jim, do you mind if I take Jason home?”

Over Jason’s scandalized sputtering, Gordon laughs. “It’s Friday and already after four, so you better not be coming back. Have a good weekend, and good luck with this one.”

Jason snaps his mouth shut, furious. Gordon must not be able to tell; he winks and claps Bruce on the back.


	7. Frightened Fawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, it's been a while . . .

Jason woke early, his hangover making it hard to crawl out of the vague nightmare he could still feel like static on his clammy skin. He looked towards the window; even with the curtains shut tight, he could tell the sun was just barely starting its crest forward. As Jason's breathing slowed, calming as he zoned out watching the gray haze through his sliver of a window, he realized his phone was trilling on the nightstand.

Only one person could have had the number. He answered without even looking at the caller ID.

"Still rising earlier than the old man?" Jason asked.

On the other end of the line, Alfred tutted. "As if that's in any way difficult."

Jason felt his mouth turn up with mirth. "To what do I owe the wake-up call, Alfred?"

_"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeit of our own behavior - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion . . ."_

Jason barked out a laugh, but the static was back on his skin, in his ears. "Why in the world would you be quoting _King Lear_ at 5 AM, Alfie?"

"To prove to you two things, sir. The first: you really are depriving this old man of a dazzling literary companion in the twilight of his life."

"And the second?"

The voice was no longer Alfred, though it still spoke with his mannerisms, as if Jason's mind couldn't make up which would hurt him more. Catherine's hair framing Sheila's face.

"Men have been attributing their mistakes and successes to fate for far longer than either of us have been alive," Bruce said. "Rarely were they ever correct."

Jason woke a second time, just as abruptly, the time still before 7:00 in the morning and his phone silent. Foolishly, he checked for missed calls, but there were none.

"Why would there be?" he asked himself aloud, though even his own voice startled him.

His new henchmen would definitely still be asleep; crime of this caliber was, after all, more of a night time activity. He wouldn't need to check on them until tonight anyway, when they would be under instructions to start asking after the Black Mask.

He kept himself occupied, tossing and turning in bed, going over his encounter with the perfect son, painstakingly pushing his dream out of his mind, before giving up after only a couple hours. Surely, the mobsters and money-movers he needed to keep an eye on would already be in crisis control mode from last night. It would be useful, he defended to himself, to wander around the clubs and the wharf at a time of day he knew would only be sparsely populated, before everyone in the Narrows and East End started looking for him, putting two and two together about him.

He got dressed, trying to take his time but utterly failing at being anything other than efficient; three lifetimes had drilled into Jason a need to always be prepared - ready to fight if you were the strongest in the room, or run if you weren't. He recycled his clothes from yesterday. Thankfully his training with the Suicide Squad meant that the dirty work he had had to do yesterday didn't leave evidence on his person - anything overtly noticeable, anyway.

As he styled his hair in the mirror, pushing the white streak that came in over the scar where his scalp had split in two, Jason thought abruptly of Grayson, the way his face had contorted almost in pain when he had seen Wesker's body on the news.

Pathetic, Jason thought to himself. How could a man who dedicated himself to the protection of a city be dismayed at the death of one of its feral dogs? How could someone - _two_ someones, if he was counting - spend years investigating homicides, abductions, trafficking, and still think all human life weighed the same when placed on the scales?

But that wasn't it, not really. It had nothing to do with Wesker, or Napier, or even Garzonas if he was willing to think about that scumbag. Bruce and Dick had never cared about the weight of the criminal's soul, only their own. They wanted to stay _above it_ , keep their hands clean.

Pathetic, Jason thought again. Pathetic and foolish.

A dip in the sidewalk brought Jason back to himself, stomach dropping out of him as he stumbled on the uneven pavement.

He was losing time, getting lost in his head when he should be focused, knew he _could_ be focused. This certainly wasn't the toughest operation to run; after all, it didn't need to have an exit strategy. Jason looked up at the street sign, orienting himself. He was still walking the right direction, towards seedier neighborhoods and the smell of trash rotting in the bay. It looked like he had only missed a few blocks.

The hairs on his neck stood; he heard a whistling tune behind him, coming from some stranger in the street - carnival music. He stopped in his tracks, other Gothamites parting around him on their brisk walks, but one, the whistler, slammed straight into his back. Jason spun and grabbed her around each arm.

"Oof," Harley said, "would it kill ya to give some warning?"

Jason dragged her into the nearest alley, the rest of Gotham paying them no mind, purposefully avoiding the conflict. He held her so tight there were already finger-shaped bruises welling up under her skin.

"What the fuck are you doing here, Quinn?"

"Oh, you know my name! And here I thought I'd have to introduce myself, seeing as Amanda never puts us on a team together." She laughed a little nervously, but didn't try to shake the grip. "This kinda puts me at a disadvantage, to be honest. Joey, was it?"

"I'm sure you know damn well what my name is, seeing as you had _his_ fucking name around your neck last time we saw each other."

Harley visibly swallowed, but her eyes no longer held any fear. "Oh honey," she said. "Mr. J wouldn't be able to pull you out of a line-up, and I've figured some things out since then."

Harley slid down the wall abruptly, pulling Jason's torso forward with her from where they were attached, his fingers only gripping tighter in surprise. She used the momentum to slip between his legs, flipping Jason and escaping the grip.

She popped up standing, rocking back onto her heels a bit, extending a hand for him to take. Jason pulled his gun, slowly levering himself back up to standing. Harley huffed a sigh, but put her hands up, non-threatening.

"You look like shit," Harley said. "You must be coming down hard from everything."

"You have a gun pointed at your face; you really want to be telling the person holding it that they look like shit?"

"My New Year's resolution was to be more truthful," she shrugged.

"Why'd Waller send you, huh?" Jason asked, shoving closer to Harley, pushing the gun into her chest. "She trying to get into my head?"

"I don't think there's a single person out there that wants to get into _your_ head," Harley laughed back. "Mandy wanted to send Floyd, y'know, Deadshot? But he didn't wanna come if it was just an extraction mission, so I volunteered." She looked up and took a deep sigh. "First time back in Gotham since I joined the Squad. Smells worse than I remember. Ain't that funny? It didn't have a smell in my head."

"You're standing next to a dumpster, Harley."

Harley turned to look further into the alley; she observed a few rats sort through the muck under a rusted out dumpster. "Huh," she said. "That'll do it."

"What the fuck does Amanda think you're going to do against me?" he groused. "You're not even packing heat right now."

"To be fair, I am _supposed_ to be packing," she said, "and tied to a chaperone, so if we could kinda move this along?"

Jason cocked his head to the side. "What do you want then, Quinn? If you've ducked a partner and come unarmed."

Harley rolled her eyes so hard, she got a crick in her neck. "To help you, idiot! You're tripping balls right now because of how little drugs are in your system-"

"That makes no sense-"

"- _and_ there's no way you'd be able to find and kill Jack without my help."

"What did you say?" he cut her off again. "What the fuck did you just say?"

Harley's eyes softened on him again. "I can't do it, Todd. Know myself better than to even try, to be honest. But maybe you can?"

Jason lowered the gun. He wanted to call her out, but it really felt like she was speaking the truth. Of course, it _always_ felt that way at first, when Catherine was telling him she'd try to stay clean for his birthday, when Talia was promising that their relationship wouldn't dissolve into just money after the divorce, when Sheila had kissed the crown of his head, after he had finally figured out his father's sordid history.

"He killed me, you know," was instead Jason's follow-up, and Harley nodded, hugging herself around the waist.

"Me too, kid," she muttered. "Now that he doesn't have Roman's protection, he doesn't roll with much of a crowd. If you go quick, you'll be able to find him at the motel off Amusement Mile; he's owned it off books for a while and I doubt he's moved since I've seen him." Harley looked up again at the sky. "The day's still young, so you might be able to catch him sleeping and make it quick. Y'know, if you want it to be quick."

As he was about to respond, two GCPD officers turned the corner into the alley. 

"Shit!" Harley exclaimed.

"Jason Todd, we're bringing you in," Officer Muggs said, sneering. "You're a person of interest in-"

Jason shot Muggs in the chest, then did the same to his partner and jumped to the fire escape, not looking back to see how Harley was faring.

As he fled from one unhinged situation to another, he remembered how it started, how _he_ had started as a child of Gotham: Willis is halfway through a black-out and Catherin isn't providing the same satisfaction that she usually does when she plays punching bag. He starts in on the boy. In between hits, Willis tells Jason that it's a damn shame Jason didn't die the moment he was born, but it was a close thing. He is referring to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which Jason was born with. 

"Your momma didn't want you, but couldn't afford an abortion," he says. "Guess she didn't drink enough to do the job."

Later, Jason asks Catherine if she didn't want him.

"I have always wanted you, honey," she answers. "More than life itself." He assumes she is lying, the needles she uses to throw her life away seen as evidence enough. It isn't until a decade after the incident that he realizes: his father was referring to someone else.


End file.
